User Bypass for iphones, ipads, etc. Multiple kids.

I've found several questions like this all over the internet, but I'm not able to get a straight answer so I thought I'd give it one more shot here before I return the router we bought. I purchased an R6200 and chose that one because I was told that it would allow me to set up multiple users with varying levels of access so that my husband and I could allow his daughter (12) to have more internet access with different hours than his son (10). I was very detailed about the fact that they bring devices to our house that we did not provide, so installing software ourselves could not be a requirement.

Anyway, I set up the user accounts, levels, hours, etc. I see where Netgear states that this router is compatible with iphones and such. That's all very lovely. I keep reading references to a "user utility." What is this magical user utility? Where do I find it? Is it the Netgear Genie?

If it is the Netgear Genie, we have another problem: I loaded it to both of our phones, and it will not allow us to log in as anything but "admin." Clearly, we do not want to hand administrator access over to the very children that we're trying to protect from inappropriate content.

Where do they go to plug in the user names and passwords that I spent hours and days setting up for each child's individual needs? What application should I tell them to use to access their accounts? Without the ability to do that, they will be restricted from everything because that's how tight the rest of the network is. There seem to be a LOT of other users having the same problem.

I spent over 2 hours with the geniuses at Netgear trying to describe this problem. It seems that sometime after November 2013 they removed the User Utility from new installations. I actually happen to have the User Utility on one or two of my machines, but I can't install it anymore on new devices since they removed it. Great thinking on the part of Netgear. To think that I bought the Netgear router because they were a Silicon Valley company. Now, I have to install Genie on my apps if I want to do the bypass. Great thinking, Netgear, yeah I have parental control on my iPad but now my kid hack into my router.

Off topic, the OpenDNS folks are geniuses as well. I paid for the premium OpenDNS subscription for the main purpose of being able to add 50 blacklist sites, but yet now that I have a NetGear router, I'm forced to go back to 25 sites - unless of course I want to bypass all the Netgear features.

Hopefully, someone from opendns support can respond definitely about how this issue will be resolved.

What I'd like to do is this:

1. Set up very restrictive internet access for anyone who is accessing the internet through the Netgear router.

2. Create a bypass login for users on my network.

3. Enable the user to login to the bypass account to gain a different level of website filtering. (in this case, the filtering would be reduced...enabling a less restrictive web filter for the bypass login.

4. The user must be able to login to the bypass without the admin password.

Do the parental controls allow this? If not, it doesn't work for a family with multiple users with different internet access requirements.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do too. I can't seem to access the bypass accounts without logging in as the admin though. Kind of defeats the purpose of having the parental controls turned on if I give the device admin access.

On that first thread, I actually already posted there last week. It seems to be saying that you have to log in as an admin and Then access the parental controls. Am I reading that right? The thread turns off topic into a VPN thread and then goes haywire, so I got lost and stop following.

This is the part I don't understand: if I log in as an admin to go to the bypass account, what is to stop the child from going out of the bypass account and into the admin function to make adjustments to their own settings? Basically, when I download the app on their phone, it looks just like the app on my phone, and I can change the parental controls from my phone, so why couldn't they? A 12 year old is fully capable of doing that.

I have the genie on my phone and can see all of the things people are saying in these other threads. I feel like I get how it's supposed to work. It's the pieces that exist on their phones that aren't making sense.

From my research, I discover that the problem isn't the netgear genie...the problem is the netgear user utility. On the kid's android and iOS phones, you don't want the netgear genie, you want only the user utility which enables them to login only to their bypass account and does not give them access to the router (and the parental controls). Two separate items: netgear genie and netgear user utility. I found a user utility for macs and for Windows on the netgear site, but did not find one for the mobile devices that run android, windows RT and the iPhone/Ipads. So, if any of the kids use a tablet, rather than a pc/mac, they have to live with the more stringent parental controls and are not allowed to bypass. Has anyone heard if they are created the needed apps for the netgear user utility?

I believe that the discussion is occurring in this forum (rather than on the netgear site) because this is the forum netgear directs you to for support for the parental controls.

Background - Consumer with no network experience
I bought my netgear router too to do the things stated above. I think I got it to work. The admin can set up multiple profiles (bypass accounts). The default web restriction should be the most stringent. The admin sets up bypass accounts with their own username and password. I used the username as the actual name of the child and give them a password. They then login through the genie but they do not have admin rights to change any settings. It is just the rights to access whatever settings they are allowed. So, after all, your child may not even need this because the default is the most stringent and you would then have the bypass account for yourself (e.g. Dad). You could do one for Guest to have one less restrictive as well. I hope this helps.

ksmythe, that's what I thought too, but when I went to the netgear site from their devices, I can't find the utility. It almost feels like some magic thing that doesn't exist. lol! Do you have a link to where I can find the right tool? I did find a download, but it said I couldn't access it from their ipads. I'll check the other forum as well because they do send us here.

Sah22, the problem is that there are Children, not one Child. If there was only one, it would be fine. There are two though, and I want them to be able to access different things at different times. Plus, if one is being punished, I don't want to turn off access for both. Since we don't always provide the devices, there's no way for us to know if they brought one in, in a bag, without us seeing it. I don't want to be obsessed with the router and checking it at all hours to make sure no one is breaking in, and that there's not a new device, and such.

Lcd112 - you seem to be right. I thought I had it working. I have six kids and set up a bypass account for each. I can set up what to block for each kid separately. However, I am now struggling with the separate app. My wife has a chromebook and there is no app for her to log into to get elevated privileges. Now that's a pain! It seems like it should be easier than this. It seems like they have the infrastructure in place to make this a wonderful product, but it's just not there yet. What should be done is when looking at the network map and you see the devices, you should be able to click on that device and set the appropriate permissions for that device. As of right now it looks like you can only block them from the internet altogether.
I hope you get it worked out. Please continue to share any successes. If you choose a different product that works please share as well. These types of products are frustrating because it seems like you have to be a network engineer to know how to work theses things.
I also agree with ksmythe - it is weird that netgear directly sends us to this site. I thought it was part of netgear but it is clearly not.

It walks through how to set up the user utility. First, I used netgear genie to set up a bypass account with one of my kid's names. I gave the bypass account greater privileges than they have by default. I ran the user utility, logged in as that child and they had the extra privileges.

It still doesn't work on the iphone, android phone or tablet, or the windows RT tablet, but does work on the laptops. Now...if they can just make a user utility app for windows RT, android, and iOS we should be set.

I have installed versions 2.1.5 and 2.1.6 of the management utility on two windows PCs that my kids use. However, there is no 'user utility' installed, only the management utility. I tried rebooting the computers. But still only have the management utility. What am I doing wrong?

mdieters1 and itperson2013, it seems you didn't read the answers above but just blindly wrote instead.Again, you need to download and install the User Utility. This has not much to do with the Management Utility.

Hi LCD112 - can I ask you a question - you seem to imply that you have been able to have the Genie Utility work for you in such a way that children can run it but do not need to put in the Router Admin password? I know many people are saying that you can use the user utility - but since we have iPADs, Androids etc in the house, not to mention an xBox this is no good for me.

Can you just confirm how you manage to bring up a Bypass Login in the NetGear Genie Utility without having access to the page with "Disable Parental Controls" which would allow the child to simply remove all controls.... We might all be missing something in Genie that only you have spotted...

Ok - so not final post. I have tried the user utility and for me (and I appreciate this may only be a feature of later routers) even that stops at the point of "detecting router status" to prompt the user for the admin password on the router. Sorry but this all seems to be an epic fail as far as I can see.